World’s largest solar power plant is forcing pilots to fly blind

Pilots flying blind and birds cooking while they fly? That's the price you pay for large-scale solar.

The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System located in the Mojave Desert between California and Nevada came online last month. It is the largest solar thermal power plant in the world right now, consisting of 340,000 mirrors focusing the sun’s energy on three 459-foot water boiling towers.

It is co-owned by NRG Energy, BrightSource Energy, and Google, and is providing clean energy for 140,000 homes in California by producing 377 megawatts of electricity. But it’s also causing a major issue for pilots who have been complaining about it for the past 6 months.

The issue stems from the fact those towers are so bright pilots cannot look in their direction. That’s a problem for any aircraft approaching or leaving the airport in Boulder City, Nevada, as the pilots cannot scan the skies for signs of other planes in the area, causing a safety concern. Imagine having three new suns at ground level and you get an idea why they can’t look without being blinded.

The complaints have been filed with the Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) since August, but have only now reached the California Energy Commission. It’s unclear why. There’s also uncertainty over what exactly can be done to fix the problem. How do you stop a tower being so bright when hundreds of thousands of mirrors are reflecting the sun on to it?

Co-owner NRG Energy has responded by saying they are taking the complaints seriously and can adjust the heliostats (mirrors) to a certain degree. That seems unlikely to remove the problem, though, and will certainly be a factor the next time someone seeks permission to build one of these solar power plants anywhere near an airport.